Make Your Business Impossible to Ignore: Day with Dan Kennedy (4 of 4) | #Marketing - Ep. 18

Now obviously if you want to sell stuff online, you're going to need a good funnel, but if you want a great funnel, then you're going to need to use ClickFunnels. ClickFunnels is the number one funnel builder in the world, helping more first-time entrepreneurs to leave their 9 to 5 and to launch their dream than any other company on earth. ClickFunnels was built for the dreamer and the doer, and you can get a free 14-day trial by going to clickfunnels.com/podcast right now. That's clickfunnels.com/podcast. ClickFunnels, because you're one funnel away from changing the world. This is The Russell Brunson Show. What's up everybody, this is Russell. Welcome back to the show, and this is the exciting conclusion of our series with Dan Kennedy. And if you guys, again, if you don't know, Dan Kennedy was my first mentor. He's how I learned marketing and sales, was originally all from Dan. And so honored to have him at this year's Funnel Hacking Live. We had a whole VIP day with him, and I'm gonna share with you guys my 2-hour interview with him on stage. And what's cool is like, I don't talk a lot. I ask a question, I sit back and let Dan do the delivery, and hopefully you got a lot from this interview so far. Again, we're on part number 4 right now, and in today's episode we're gonna wrap up the final installment of the interview. Dan and I are gonna deep dive into sales and marketing, the formulas behind market disruption, radical positioning, how to attract massive attention, whether positive or negative, and how to dominate your industry. And it's gonna be a lot of fun, so I hope you guys enjoy this episode. If you haven't plugged into Dan Kennedy's world yet, if you go to noBSletter.com, you can go get a free subscription to his print newsletter. It's worth its weight in gold. It's like literally getting Dan Kennedy to fly to your house once a month and teach you the best thing that he's got that month. He's been publishing this new letter for 40+ years. I've been a subscriber now for almost 20, and if you are just getting started, now is the time to go to noBSletter.com and become a subscriber. That way you can learn from the man himself, Mr. Dan Kennedy. With that said, we're gonna jump into the exciting conclusion of part number 4 of the Day with Dan from Funnel Hacking Live 10. I hope you guys enjoy this, and then next week we'll get back to our normal podcast programming. Appreciate you all, and I hope you enjoy this episode with Dan Kennedy. Are there any other things that those of us who want to step into that and become the radical or the man on the white horse, like any other things specifically you'd recommend people thinking about or doing as they're trying to step into that?

Well, so there's a lot of models. So this is really pretty easy to model because it's pretty formulaic. So if you— again, if you think about the MLM industry, and you go look at Turner, if you think about the diet industry in the '60s and '70s, and you go look at Atkins, if you look at the launch of Apple by Jobs, you know, And really, the expansion of Apple, where they had to go get them and bring them back. So on and on and on. There are a lot of models. So if you pick a category, if your category is health, if you're in the health business, there's a lot. Models all the way back to the creator of chiropractic. And, and, and so that, that history is all there, right? In finance, there are a lot of models all the way back to the bookstore, Baldwin, that you and I were at, not at the same time, but we were there yesterday. The Rare Bookstore at the Venetian. There's a book, The Stock Market and You, something like that, right? And it's from 1930. And I'm not gonna remember the author's name, but he was a big heretic at the time about investing. So there's these models kind of in every category. And then there's the sort of the instruction manuals for the aftermath of it, the man on the white horse. Position. Uh, Eric Hoffer's book The True Believer is, you know, one of the basics, the fundamentals, uh, for people specifically in the information, uh, want a way to make a living. The Lyman Wood book would be another one. So there's no shortage of things to look at, understand what each part was, and replicate it. Probably 80%, there's a book involved. Somebody did a book and they promoted a book. If you think about even in profession, in the advertising industry, Right? The early disruptors of agency models and advertising strategies, Ogilvy would be one of them. They all wrote a book explaining themselves. And their radical ideas. Right? So Ogilvy on Advertising is Ogilvy's explanation of what he believes, why he believes it, and at the time it was very contrary to traditional advertising. So what Ogilvy said, if you don't have a big idea, don't waste your money on advertising. Most advertising of the time had no big ideas. It was just basic brand advertising, you know, not much more than a logo and a picture of a building. And we've been in business since 1936. There's your ad, right? So he was pretty big heretic. Been very theatrical. Over the— most of the time in New York, he roamed around wearing a cape. And he drove a big-ass Rolls-Royce. Killed himself to get the Rolls-Royce ad account, which he said was a terrible account to have. Very hard to advertise Rolls-Royces. He did come up with a great ad, of course. But so he used to park this thing right in front of his offices illegally every day, pay the tickets, and go to lunch wearing a great big velvet cape and a book. So you will almost 80% of the time in any of the models you see, you're going to find a book. Not only in the contemporary models are you going to find podcasts, YouTube channel, right? You're going to find the new media as well as the book used, used in the same way, right? It, it allows people to find you, but to get them to go look, you have to stir up all this where they already are. So, like, a lot of people have abandoned trade journal advertising in niches, and they shouldn't have, because it's a great place to start this. Readership's still about 20% of an association, and the rates are cheap because people are abandoning print, you know, and so forth. Uh, um, J. Abraham had an ad he used a number of times. It's really a great ad. I think Halbert wrote it, but I'm not sure. Um, he used it in insurance and he used it in medical. Uh, the headline was, who is this man And why is he saying these terrible things about your professor? Or who is this man and why is he saying these terrible things about your business? And he would then play this game in the ad, right? And with a little time, of course, opposition arose. And he would quote the ad, and now I had the opposition. To the ad. Right. And it was a— they were great lead generation campaigns. Now in today's world, an ad like that would be a lot more productive. Because there's a lot more ways for the curious to go find him and start to, you know, get cooked in his environment, that ad will drive people to Amazon, it will drive people to TikTok, it will drive people to LinkedIn, it will drive people, right? And so as long as you're there, that ad now is infinitely more productive than it was pre-internet. You know, as I think you know, the, you know, there's 3 media choices, right? There's online only, there's offline only, and there's integrated media. And the only sensible one is integrated, you know, is integrated media. Because each media always creates spinoff traffic to other media. And if you aren't there to capture it, you lose it. When you have opposition to you, being voiced, um, that drives traffic, okay? And as long as you're there to get it and then carry that message forward, uh, you benefit from all the opposition. Um, it takes a lot longer in any market to get famous by getting famous than by getting famous and infamous. The infamy helps. It's so early. We ran the first personal power show, the first Tony show with Cathy Ranker. The psychiatric professional community and the psychologist professional community, the therapist professional community, They, as that thing got traction, they all got pretty vocal in their criticism. Well, I mean, look, their argument was uncredentialed, right? Therefore risky, could really hurt some people. Same thing for Warner Earhart and Ast, which preceded Tony. And he's insisting he can bring somebody up on stage and instantly cure some chronic phobia they've had for years that we treat for years. Woody Allen's— if we have any in the audience, I'm sorry, but Woody Allen's line about therapists was always, I got the best one in New York. I've been going to him every week for 30 years. And like Tony's curing us like this, I'm sure you saw the instant orgasm thing, right? From Tony? Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's really funny. Good punchline. Yeah, but she was due. Yeah, right. Okay. So there was a lot of griping, right? Well, so what did that do? It sent people, the restless native, the patient, who's in his 7th year and still has the same problem he had when he started, the professional who's questioning what he or she has been told about how to do the profession, it sent them to go investigate. And then the more places you are, because different people go different places, the more places you are, The more you benefit. And that's why this last time around, like, Trump was everywhere. I mean, everywhere. You couldn't avoid it. And people start, well, That actually makes sense.

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Um, uh, the— I do some pro bono work for a food bank. Not a lot, but we have philosophical conflicts, but still. Oh, and, uh, the executive director, uh, is another one of these You can't tell anybody I told you this, ever, ever, because we all hate the guy. But I voted for him because if I separate him from his policies, they all make sense to me. Well, how would that happen? She would have to consume some of him to get to that point, right? So I'm sure— here's the media probably that she consumes all the time: NPR, PBS, MSNBC. She probably gets a bunch of stuff from like-minded people in social media. And what did all that do? Instead of keeping her away from Satan, It made her go take a look at Satan, right? So the opposition is useful, and I've always gone out of my way to trigger it, to have an against position, to have a villain, all of that. If you take any No BS book, any of the titles, they all have this early in the book. There is an establishment, archaic villain established. And then attacked, and then the alternative system, you know, is offered to you. And like the ruthless management book, has gotten the most negative stuff, reviews, you know, all that. Mostly people have read it. They just don't like the word ruthless. I'm deadly serious about that, by the way. But I'd almost rather have the negative reviews than the positive ones. 'Cause I know what effect it has on people, right? It's like, well, I gotta take a look at this guy, right? And a lot of people don't have the courage to play this game. But when you understand its architecture and then you start looking for it, you find it used again and again and again.

I saw an ad the other day you would love. It's for this book that's coming out. It's like a mind control persuasion book. And the ad was basically— it was two Amazon reviews. One was 5 stars, like, this is the greatest book I've ever read on mind control. And then the second one was, this book should be banned and burned. And the headline was, both of these are right. And it's like, I keep seeing that ad running and running. I'm like, man, that is such a good ad.

Perfect. Well, see, years ago, the Catholic Church used to be in movies. So they used to tell everybody— I know this because my first wife was Catholic— they used to put out a list of movies that Catholics should not see. And I always thought, do you idiots know what you're doing? See, because I can tell you right now that you're succeeding with some, but you're driving a whole bunch of people to the theater to see this movie who probably wouldn't have gone otherwise. They banned The Exorcist. When it came out, the original movie, The Exorcist, which was basically a junk horror movie that my guess is would have died at the box office if the Catholic Church hadn't made such a big stink about it and told everybody, stay away from this thing. And I remember thinking, this is— they're the greatest sales force for this movie ever. You can't beat this, right? I mean, this is like your parents telling you, you know, don't read this book. What are you going to do? You're all going to read the book. Right? I mean, I was a little kid. I don't know how old, but probably, let's see, '60, it was probably right around '63 that the original Peyton Place novel came out. It was a big deal. You're even too young, probably. Scandalous, this book. And It was about a small town and everybody in it had secrets and a lot of sexual overtones and fiction, but based on real people. In fact, a bunch of people sued. And so it was the housewife's hidden book of the year, right? They all had it and they all hid it somewhere and they all read it. A contemporary phenomenon might have been Fifty Shades of Grey for the first 6 months or so, right? Which is a very funny book. I don't know that they meant it for comedy, but you know, you go— most wives go ask the husband to tie her up in bed. He will. And then he'll go get a sandwich and watch the game in peace. That's what's going to happen. You know, I mean, it's not— Oh, you know, be careful what you wish for. So anyway, this book was, you know, hidden and not for minors and, you know, and all that. And it took me about a day to find it, but I found it. And it turns out pretty much every kid I knew had found his mother's book and was reading some of it, then putting it back and reading some of it and putting it back. And that's great advertising, right? And this is the opposite of being dominated by disapproval. You actually create disapproval to use disapproval. Mm-hmm. I think that about a third of Trump is doing these things, mostly little ones, mostly to entertain himself and to create another blast of this kind of conversation. And it's amazing to me how the media always bites. It's just incredible. So a couple of days ago, I guess he was asked, because there's some rumors about Prince Harry Have they lied on his visa application about ever using drugs or something? So somebody asked Trump at one of his— he answers questions pretty much all the time. Somebody asked him if it turned out that it was true, if he would deport Prince Harry. Now, there's any number of ways you could normally, if you are normal, person you would handle? You know, like, "Question?" He says, "No, he's got enough trouble with that wife of his. She's terrible." Now, this is really not worth being remarked upon, but hours of media time How dare he? And, you know, the relationship between America and England will be forever severed. And, you know, they're on fire about this. And I just wondered, when it goes to his head, does he say to himself, this will be fun, right? I'll just throw this out there. Or does it not even— is there no edit mechanism at all? I don't know. I'd love to ask him. Because there's a lot of it, right? And it accumulates. And it's actually magnetic. People sort of, well, maybe I'll start paying attention to this guy. 'Cause that was funny, right? Wonder what else he's gonna say today. But you just have to not care about the disapproval. And that's so contrary. It's why you see this model. This model is not— how do you make it up? So you see this model over and over and over again, but you don't see it commonly used, because if everybody used it, it would, you know, would disintegrate. It would have no power because most people, business people, are hypersensitive to any disapproval, and they are In an exercise of futility, they are seeking no disapproval. And first of all, it can't be done. So you can't do it even if you try, you know. I mean, there are people who don't like vanilla ice cream. I mean, I think it's hard to be opposed to it. But there are people who will give you a 30-minute lecture on why vanilla ice cream is terrible. And there's people that don't like anything else, right? So you can't get to 100%. You can't even get to 100% neutrality, 100% ambivalence, you can't even get to, let alone 100% approval. So you're not going to get there no matter what you do. And you're never going to be the talk of the town because of that. If that worked, in 2016, Jeb Bush would have been president. Well, because that's— That's what he is. And that's what he fashioned himself to be. Nothing to object to. But nothing, period, either. Right? Nothing to really get excited about one way or the other. I think, like the NFL has figured this out with halftime shows, I think they're deliberately doing shows that a lot of people talk about as the worst one ever. And people are tuning in to see how bad and offensive it can possibly be. And then they like complaining about it for 3 or 4 days, right? Because otherwise you wouldn't do what they've done the last couple of years. So this is contrary to sort of the way we are taught to behave, really from childhood on up, right? And, but like nobody drives 50 miles to get vanilla ice cream either. Right? It's just not a big thing. And so if you're vanilla, and if you try and do it all positive, so if you look at media, for a time, the two highest paying broadcasters ever were Limbaugh and Howard Stern. And then when Howard went to satellite, that ended that. But when they were both on AM radio, they had the two biggest audiences. And obviously not a lot in common other than the fact that they said triggering controversial things that then got multiplied out into other media and then caused people to be curious and go take a look. And highly disapproved of, right? In both cases. Howard Head has some women fans, but, you know, not a lot. It's pretty much a guy's, you know, a guy's club. And Limbaugh, He didn't have any liberal fans. He had liberals who listened to get mad. But so Howard had and has a lot of women who have very negative reactions to him. And the ones that listen complain amongst their friends. And the same was true of Limbaugh. So again, if you're looking for a model, you're looking at not the pleasant morning AM radio host who— there's 3 of them on the show, kind of the Today Show of radio, and they do the weather and they do the traffic and they talk about local community events. And here's what we know about those people. They're never going to get rich. They're never going to move up the media ladder. They're going to be in local media their entire lives. And most people from one week to the next don't even know they exist. As they age in their careers, the most common question asked amongst people in their community is, are they still alive? I didn't think that guy was still alive. Is he still alive? I thought he was dead. Okay, the model is Limbaugh. The model is Stern, right? And you would go back to Limbaugh day one forward, Howard day one forward, in order to see what they had done if you wanted to become a top 10, you know, radio personality, or now podcast personality, right? I mean, Rogan's model, all the secrets are visible, right? Now you got to go all the way back to Rogan day one and follow the model all the way to forward. But there's nothing hidden. All right? All of his secrets are visible. And one of the things he does is he says controversial things. And he has people on who are greatly disapproved of. And then that gets multiplied out through the media. Right? A lot of symbiosis going on. Right? So, yeah, he really helped Trump. Or Trump really helped him. A whole new audience, you know, in both directions. So what does that tell you? So that tells you If you are using a podcast as part of your media, make sure you have some people on it who offend a bunch of people. No, I'm deadly serious. No, no, no, I'm not kidding. There's no point in having somebody on that everybody's going to forget. After the vanilla ice cream is gone. And they're not gonna multiply out through other media. What's the point? No, have somebody on that a lot of people disagree with and disapprove of who can hold their own for 2 or 3 hours, preferably have an audience they bring, but even if they don't, because having that happen will bring more attention to you than having the approved-of person on will bring attention to you. Association— we'll talk later about cast of characters, but But one of the things about this model in association is radical with radical, heretic with heretic, and not just positive but also negative because you want noise. You want to be talked about in a multiplied way almost no matter how you are talked about. When Halbert was— he never actually got on, but Johnny talked about his family crest letter. Letter and about Halbert as a guy who claims to be the world's greatest copywriter and that this letter has been mailed more than any other letter and it gives you your family crest. And so I answered it, I got the family crest and it's a complete scam and it, you know, it's a ripoff and it's silly and Albert said, you can't get better press. He said, it's just terrific. He said, I'm the only copywriter ever mentioned on The Tonight Show in the history of the entire Tonight Show. Direct marketers, companies who wouldn't touch me before, are calling wanting me to write copy. Okay, because Carson says I wrote copy so good I could steal money from anybody. Right? Well, the phone's ringing off the hook. Right? And now if it had been nice, wouldn't have had near the impact. So you, when we started, you asked about fear. And most of the reason people won't use this model is that they're afraid of it. And what they're really afraid of is vocal and visible disapproval. Yeah.

Well, I think we're at the end of the session, and that was amazing. Should we all give Dan a huge round of applause? Do you have a funnel but it's not converting? The problem 99.9% of the time is that your funnel is good, but you suck at selling. If you want to learn how to sell so your funnels will actually convert, then get a ticket to my next selling online event by going to sellingonline.com/podcast. That's sellingonline.com/podcast.